In her 15th novel, following a collection of stories (Life Times) and essays (Telling Times), the the late Nobel Prize winner has lost none of her fire. Nadine Gordimer gives us a stunning portrait of the new South Africa in the married life of a white engineer and a black law student, for whom the ultimate infidelity might not be a romantic tryst but a political one.

"A perfect example of what literature can give us that history books cannot. As always, Gordimer excels at pulling back for a panoramic vista of a time and place, then narrowing her focus to remind us of the highly specific ways that politics shape the private lives of unique individuals, people not unlike ourselves. Only a novelist with Gordimer's gifts can offer so much information, at such depth, about the cataclysmic battles and the rough transition to peace that she and her characters have witnessed."—NYTBR